The Conflict Landscape of Verdun, France: Conserving Cultural and Natural Heritage After WWI

Machado, Rémi de Matos; Hupy, Joseph P.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-18991-4_5

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…The constructed underground cities or tunnels are impressive examples of excavation for defensive and escape plans, which causes perturbation or removal of vast tons of lateritic soil. Warfare tunneling was widely practiced during the American Civil War, World War II, and the Vietnam War [43][44][45][46]. Another example is bombs and shells, causing cratering during their use in conflicts or troop exercises.…”

Section: Physical Impact Of Military Activities On Soilmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soil Contamination in Areas Impacted by Military Activities: A Critical Review

et al. 2020

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Military activities drastically affect soil properties mainly via physical/chemical disturbances during military training and warfare. The present paper aims to review (1) physical/chemical disturbances in soils following military activities, (2) approaches to characterization of contaminated military-impacted sites, and (3) advances in human health risk assessment for evaluating potential adverse impacts. A literature search mainly covering the period 2010–2020 but also including relevant selected papers published before 2010 was conducted. Selected studies (more than 160) were grouped as follows and then reviewed: ~40 on the presence of potentially toxic elements (PTEs), ~20 on energetic compounds (ECs) and chemical warfare agents (CWAs), ~40 on human health risk assessment, and generic limits/legislation, and ~60 supporting studies. Soil physical disturbances (e.g., compaction by military traffic) may drastically affect soil properties (e.g., hydraulic conductivity) causing environmental issues (e.g., increased erosion). Chemical disturbances are caused by the introduction of numerous PTEs, ECs, and CWAs and are of a wide nature. Available generic limits/legislation for these substances is limited, and their contents do not always overlap. Among numerous PTEs in military-impacted zones, Pb seems particularly problematic due to its high toxicity, abundance, and persistence. For ECs and CWAs, their highly variable physiochemical properties and biodegradability govern their specific distribution, environmental fate, and transport. Most site characterization includes proper spatial/vertical profiling, albeit without adequate consideration of contaminant speciation/fractionation. Human health risk assessment studies generally follow an agreed upon framework; however, the depth/adequacy of their use varies. Generic limits/legislation limited to a few countries do not always include all contaminants of concern, their content doesn’t overlap, and scientific basis is not always clear. Thus, a comprehensive scientific framework covering a range of contaminants is needed. Overall, contaminant speciation, fractionation, and mobility have not been fully considered in numerous studies. Chemical speciation and bioaccessibility, which directly affect the results for risk characterization, should be properly integrated into risk assessment processes for accurate results.

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Section: Physical Impact Of Military Activities On Soilmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soil Contamination in Areas Impacted by Military Activities: A Critical Review

et al. 2020

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“…the pre-war farm lands) after foresters cleaned and leveled the ground to accommodate seedlings. Thus, polemoform density is notably lower in these plots (Amat, 2001(Amat, , 2015De Matos-Machado and Hupy, 2019). In close proximity to roads and monuments, landforms have been significantly altered by trampling and illicit archaeological excavations from the hundreds of thousands of visitors who come to the battlefield every year (Jacquemot and Legendre, 2011;Schnitzler and Landolt, 2013).…”

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confidence: 99%

War landform mapping and classification on the Verdun battlefield (France) using airborne LiDAR and multivariate analysis

Matos-Machado

Toumazet

Bergès

et al. 2019

Earth Surf Processes Landf

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Acting as efficient earth‐movers, soldiers can be viewed as significant geomorphological drivers of landscape change when replaced in the recent debates on Anthropocene Geomorphology. ‘Polemoforms’, generated by military activities, correspond with a set of human‐made landforms of various sizes and geometries. They are particularly common on the World War One battlefield of Verdun (France) which ranks among the largest battles of attrition along the Western Front. The artillery bombardments and building of defensive positions in that battle significantly altered the landscape, resulting in thousands of shell craters, dugouts, and gun positions that have altered both the meso and microtopography. This paper proposes an innovative methodology to make an exhaustive inventory of these small‐scale conflict‐induced landforms (excluding linear features such as trenches) using a digital terrain model (DTM) acquired by airborne LiDAR on the whole battlefield. Morphometric analysis was conducted using Kohonen's self‐organizing maps (SOMs) and hierarchical agglomerative clustering (HAC) in order to quantify and classify the high number of war landforms. This combined approach allowed for mapping more than one million landforms which can be classified into eight different shapes including shell craters and various soldier‐made landforms (i.e. shelters, gun positions, etc.). Detection quality evaluation using field observations revealed the algorithm successfully classified 93% of shell craters and 74% of anthropologically constructed landforms. Finally, the iconographic database and map series produced will help archaeologists and foresters to better manage the historic site of Verdun, today covered by a large forest of ~10 000 ha. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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The Conflict Landscape of Verdun, France: Conserving Cultural and Natural Heritage After WWI

Cited by 2 publications

References 22 publications

Soil Contamination in Areas Impacted by Military Activities: A Critical Review

Soil Contamination in Areas Impacted by Military Activities: A Critical Review

War landform mapping and classification on the Verdun battlefield (France) using airborne LiDAR and multivariate analysis

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